I help facilitate the Falls Reduction team for Nebraska Medicine. I also help facilitate nurse residency evidence based projects. I met Adrienne while she was a nurse resident, and we discussed the project she would do on her unit to help prevent patient falls.

At the time I met with Adrienne, she indicated that she had a passion for fall prevention because her grandmother had died as a result of complications from a fall at home. Over the course of the next several months, Adrienne became more actively involved with her unit in fall prevention activities and in July, 2014, Adrienne became 5 West's representative to the Falls Reduction team.

Within a few months of joining the Falls Reduction team, Adrienne accepted the committee's nomination that she become chair-elect. Adrienne's willingness and enthusiasm about doing the right thing for patients is exemplary. She has developed such strong leadership skills in a short amount of time, and I have no doubt she will continue to be an engaged, committed and caring professional nurse. In October of this year, Adrienne wrote the following email to her 5 West colleagues, as a means of introducing herself to them so they could know why she was so passionate about fall prevention and patient safety. This is the email she wrote:

"To my 5-West Family: I wanted to share with you how I got to be so passionate about preventing falls. Two to three weeks before I took the NCLEX, on my sister's birthday, my parents got a call from our family in New Jersey saying that my Lola ("grandma" in Filipino) was in the hospital for the umpteenth time in a year. But not for her usual pneumonia. She had fallen in the bathroom of my dad's brother. She ended up with one fractured hip and one fractured femur. I had learned through my work as a CNA and my nursing studies that the elderly and fractures are a bad mix, but I still tried to be positive. A day or two after she had surgery, my dad's sister (who is a nurse) was telling our parents a number of things going wrong. Lola's urine output was little to none. Her blood pressures were dropping. She was starting to swell everywhere. My parents asked me what it all meant, and I shook my head and just said, "Sepsis." It was even harder to stay positive. She wasn't going to make it. In the end, Lola ended up having to be put on a vent and was nonresponsive. After phone conferences between my dad and his siblings, it was decided that Lola would not have wanted to stay like that. She was taken off of the vent, and five days after her fall, she passed away. So, we flew to New Jersey. I don't know if I can explain to you how HORRIBLE it was seeing my Lola in her casket so swollen--that's not how my Lola looked. With my goodbye, I whispered to her that I would pass my NCLEX, and I did. Sometime after I got off of orientation, an email was sent out to ask for volunteers to represent 5-West on the Falls Reduction Team. I didn't respond at first. I kept bouncing back between "Maybe I should do it." and "Can a new person really join a committee and help?". I like to think that it was Lola's big nudge from heaven to join the committee when B emailed me, and I have truly enjoyed working with the Falls Reduction Team ever since. I did NOT tell you my story to get any sympathy (no need for sad looks and apologies, please). I wanted to tell it to you so that maybe you will feel empowered to help me, B, and the managers keep our patients safe to the best of our ability. I want you to remember that each patient is someone's loved one, and from personal experience, it is not a good feeling when you hear that your loved one has been hurt and to think what else could go wrong with them getting hurt. Please take your time when calculating the Schmid score and determining whether or not a person is a low, high, or very high fall risk, so that you can put the correct and necessary precautions in place. If you want help calculating a person's Schmid score, determining the level of fall risk, or have any questions/concerns about someone's fall risk, please grab Ben or me, any of the leads, Brandi, or Blake. We would love to help you help our patients stay safe. Thank you, Adrienne Ramos, RN, BSN"

Adrienne's compassion and caring shines throughout this message that she wrote to her coworkers. Her reminder to her coworkers that "each patient is someone's loved one" exemplifies the criteria upon which the DAISY award is established. I can think of no worthier candidate than Adrienne, to receive this honor. She truly is an outstanding role model.